First Monday Made It and a Give-away!

I'm linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics this week for my first ever Monday Made It! It's been really difficult for me to plan for my classroom when I don't have a position yet. I will only find out at the very earliest on the 19th of August. Since I could be teaching anything from K to 6, I've been making things that can be used at many different grade levels.

My first Made It is the design for my new blog. I used digital scrapbook paper and elements to create the design. I'm still in the process of figuring out how to add more links and gadgets to it.

My second Made It came after I visited Michael's to find some kind of earring holder. I didn't love the ones they had for sale, but ended up finding a black frame in the clearance section for $3! I figured that I could attach some wire and it would hold all of my earrings for me.

If you'd like to make your own, you'll need to screw in little eye screws (screws with a ring at the end) on either side and thread some picture hanging wire through them. You could then just hang it on your wall, but I wanted a background image, so I glued a piece of scrapbook paper to cardboard and stapled it to the back of the frame. Now it's a lot easier to find and put back my earrings!

My third Made It is the clip art that I've been working on this week. I started making some clip art kids on Photoshop to use in my documents (when I find out what grade I'm teaching). I put up a birthday themed freebie on Teachers Pay Teachers. If you'd like a copy, just click on the image below. 

In honour of my first Monday Made It, I'm having a give-away. Just fill out the Rafflecopter below. The winner will win one of my clipart packs of their choosing and will receive the colour version and the black and white version. All you need to do is follow my blog. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I'm currently making a set to use in class schedules and subject bins. I'm just missing a few more subjects before I post them. 

Hopefully, by next week, I'll know which school/class/grade level I will be teaching so that I can post some classroom Made Its!

2013-2014 Classroom Tour

There are still a few more weeks of summer left until I find out where / what grade level I will be teaching. It's kind of driving me crazy because I can't coordinate anything over the summer or plan much.

Anyway, until then, I might as well share what my first classroom looked like. When I got to my room, it looked pretty bare. I had quite the fresh start because the classroom had been completely emptied. Don't be fooled by the full shelves. They belonged to the previous teacher.

On the bright side, I had a pretty big room with lots of tables! Now, on to the after photos! You'll have to ignore the blue "border" on some of them... my iPad case tends to be a bit photogenic. 

I covered all of the bulletin boards in fabric and it completely transformed the room.

You can see the classroom library, Six Traits wall and a bit of the computer station behind it.

Another view of the library.

 I ended up moving the word wall to above the windows because of a lack of wall space and because the kids weren't using it... I'll explain in another post what I used instead for those kids.

 You can see a bit of the Daily 5 stations that I had set up here. Since I only had 14 students, I actually had enough space for all of them to sit at a table instead of their desk. They loved being able to choose a better seat for themselves. It was also necessary because I taught Math to a group of 20 students.

Well, that's it for last year's class. Hopefully, I will have my own classroom next year and be able to organize, decorate and label everything! 

First Post!

This is my first venture into a teaching blog, so let's see how it goes. I just finished my first year teaching in a Grade 3/4 class and loved it. If I wasn't so overwhelmed and busy, I would have started this last year. BUT that isn't the case, so here I am. Get ready for lots of colourful, crazily organized chaos!